


“Weak, Murderous, Treacherous”

by Umpleby



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umpleby/pseuds/Umpleby
Summary: Prequel now up!What Rios and Raffi said to each other on the way back to La Sirena from Synthville, after he protested the mind meld and told Agnes she wasinolvidable.The title comes from an online description of Agnes, with the poster lamenting that s/he would never understand what Rios saw in her. I keep pondering that question. I’m no nearer an answer.But I had so much fun writing this!
Relationships: Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios, Raffi Musiker & Cristóbal Rios
Comments: 22
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts), [teaandcardigans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaandcardigans/gifts), [PMD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PMD/gifts), [cicak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/gifts), [Hisselpenny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hisselpenny/gifts), [undernightlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/undernightlight/gifts).



As she hangs around Synthville limits, waiting for Rios to join her, Arcana hands her a flower - a simple daisy-like synthetic - before she smiles and says goodbye.

Raffi idly picks a petal off and lets it go with the wind. _One for Gabe._ Fourteen years, and she’s been right all along. She’s lost her baby, and gained the truth. But it’s taken a whole slice out of her life and it twists like a knife in the heart. _He loves me not._

She picks off a second one and remembers Gabe’s father. The good sex, the solid uncomplicated love, the family home, the Sunday morning breakfasts, the fierce hugs at the end when they held on to each other until they had to let go. She shakes her head to dispel the images and lets the wind take the soft little thing. _He loves me not._

The third one’s for JL. She wishes she’d known he was going to die right from the start; it would have held back the worst of her anger. _Maybe_. Her face crumples a little. Here, at the end of all things, the revelation that she is right, has been right all along, bears down on her and hurts her, in some strange way she can’t grasp, even more than being wrong would have done. She’s stayed strong, and together, and come up with all the solutions, because that was what JL expected of her, his forever XO.

But now the dark underbelly of it is catching up with her, as the monstrosity of the revelation turns in her mind. It’s the breathtaking injustice of it - all the innocence caught between the hammer and the anvil. Little Thaddeus Troi-Riker. Gabe. Elnor. And now JL is dying. She’ll be losing him, and very soon. She lets the petal go. _I love him._

The fourth one...this one is for herself, somehow. She’s going to die. She knows she is. Perhaps horribly. The knowledge thrills through her from crown to tiptoe, like skateboarding on the edge of a cliff. Two hundred and eighteen ships, and it only takes five minutes to sterilise a planet. Nothing she can do about it. But it doesn’t mean the bitterness of it is any less; it fills her like a dark corrosive tar all the way from throat to stomach. _Ah, Raffaella._ The fourth one floats away.

The last one, now. She feels the tears running down her face. Rios, darling Rios. Her baby brother, her bosom friend, her babysitter always, even when all he could do was stop her clawing at her skin in the throes of some drug or other. Fourteen years with nary a word from JL, and she couldn’t have survived any of it without that great stroke of luck: finding him, just after they’d both been cashiered, through the losers’ network of Starfleet rejects. The irony of it was that he’d always listened patiently to her drug-addled ravings about the Romulans, except now it wasn’t a _horgl_ trip anymore, it was real, and she’d dropped him neck-deep it. She wished she’d had more sense. She wished she’d sussed Jurati out. She wished Cris hadn’t - hadn’t looked at her. He’d looked at Jurati, and then he’d _seen_ her.

__

__

Oh, he’d said very little, and that through clenched teeth, when she’d pressed him, but she’d never, in all their escapades together, ever seen him so affected by any woman. And where he loved, he loved well, long, loyally.

She was sorry for Jurati, sorry enough to give her what little maternal loving she had left from the aborted attempt with Gabe, still sitting in her stomach like a stone. More than a temporary good person, Jurati, one might even say passionate, brilliant, dedicated; crushed all the same between hammer and anvil like they all had been.

But she didn’t trust her, especially now, with her broken mind, with the terrible tearing battles she’d fought against her own psyche, with the hold Oh might still have over her, with two hundred and eighteen snakeheads bearing down on them.

“Hey”, says Rios, turning up like he’s always done for her, looking somehow like he knows a happy secret. “Agnes is staying behind to do some synth work. You ready?”

She crushes the petal, and, unseen by him, flings it away.

They start walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For PMD, so she’ll start liking Raffi again.😀


	2. Chapter 2

“So”, she says, “you know that synth could have snapped you in half like you were a fucking matchstick. Very gallant of you to run to little Agnes’ aid, under the circumstances.”

Raffi never could leave well alone.

Cristobál looks away.

“What’s the matter?” she taunts. “That manky ginger puss got your tongue?”

“You’re pissed off at me for helping Agnes?”

“Helping. Helping, the man says.” She makes a disgusted face, one that she specialises in. “I thought you were getting ready to fuck her in front of a very large audience.”

“Raff,” he tuts. And then, just to pour fuel on her fire: “Jealous?”

He smiles at the choking, gurgling noise as she works herself up into a twister of a rage.

“What were you thinking, you idiot?” she bellows. “This, this little miss Apple Pie and Cream sneaks herself on board, murders her ex and our asset, who may I remind you you nearly killed yourself rescuing from, yeah, Mr Vup, remember him? How he _smelled_ you?” She pauses to fill her lungs and resumes at volume.

“And then she very nearly gets us _all_ killed by that snakehead. And just because she’s cute and little and prolly gave you good head _one_ time, you’re just, just ready to lay down your _life_ to keep her safe!”

“Actually no, Raff, she never did that.”

“Yeah, well, more fool you. What were you thinking taking on a synth for the little traitor? And to think I fed her cake. Cake!”

“I love her, Raff.”

There is a stunned silence from both of them.

Raffi bares her teeth, her anger and shock leaving a near-visible wake behind her as she strides off into the distance, her feet _whumping_ into the ground at every stride.

__

When he catches up with her she has her face in her hands and is snot-crying, noisy and bubbly. She stubbornly turns her back on him. He waits. He knows to wait.

“Before we left Synthville, I told JL I love him.” She sniffs. “And he said it back, for the first time ever he said it back.” She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, leaving a trail of slime. “Bastard’s definitely mellowed with age.” A beat. “You know we might all be dead tomorrow, don’t you. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to final curtains.”

“Do you want me to tell you I love you?” He grins.

“You’re a bastard too, you know that, right?” But the venom has gone out of her. And then, very low: “you might as well”.

He puts an arm round her and pulls her close and kisses her hair. “I love you, Raff.” he says simply. “Always have, always will.” A beat. “Though you drive me bloody mad.”

“She doesn’t deserve you, Cris. I don’t trust her. She’ll hurt you, maybe kill you, kill us all...”

The coming destruction is getting in her bones and rattling her; he realises with a sigh that he’s beyond all that. All that’s left is love, and a sense of peace. He holds her closer, the sun beating down wildly on both of them.

“I love her, Raff.”

And what he doesn’t say is: I can’t help it, it crept up on me, don’t ask me to explain it. That, and knowing that Pops was clean, means I can die a happy man.

She lets go of him, squares her shoulders, adjusts her pack to fit.

They aim for La Sirena and walk into the clear blue unknown.


End file.
